It is an error to think globalisation is purely an economic process – it has deep social, cultural and environmental consequences. This blog examines some of them.
I am currently in Shanghai speaking at a conference on the 2010 Shanghai World Expo – Exhibition & Convention Education and Research International at the Shanghai Institute of Technology.
One of the highlights of the conference was a talk by Professor Hailan Qu, Director of the Center for Hospitality and Tourism Research at Oklahoma State University. In addition to his own talk he made use of the video posted below entitled 'Did You Know' - on the subject 'Globalisation and the Information Age'. The video (showing what some people are really able to do with Powerpoint!) was created by Karl Fisch, and modified by Scott McLeod. Professor Hailan Qu supplied the link.
The video already has more than four million views on YouTube. But it deserves many more. Whatever is the current population of the planet, as part of their education for what the future will bring to humanity crammed into six minutes and six seconds, might seem quite close to an appropriate number.
There have been many posts on this blog on globalisation and the internet. But the video captures brilliantly how the barriers between people will be brought down. It illustrates brilliantly why globalisation inevitably will be a cultural process just as much as an economic one.
One of the comments on the video on YouTube simply says 'So… Aren't we all happy that we live in this era?' Key Trends in Globalisation would answer simply 'Yes'.
Those who believe that humanity can be pushed back into its narrow national boxes should simply watch this. You don't have a chance – nor do those who are scared of change, and wish to hide from the globalised culture that is coming. The globalised future of humanity will be even richer than anything in its past.
A trip to Xi’an was to see the terracotta warriors. But it also yielded some useful insights into the development of China’s tourism industry. It cannot be said that international tourism promotion is one of China’s strong points, despite the fact that the government actually explicitly understands its importance – in fact it is starting from a very low base. Elementary rules continue to be ignored – to take a simple example, the final editing of English guides and other documents is still done by people whose first language is not English and presumably the same applies to other languages. The result is the wasting of large sums of money on guides and promotional material that are literally incomprehensible. As it would, doubtless, be prohibitively expensive to have all such material translated by native English speakers nevertheless the employment of a few dozen native English speaking sub-editors, to do the final editing, would be one of the most cost effective investments the Chinese tourist authorities could make and pay for itself many times over. Similarly arrival at even the most international Chinese airports, such as Shanghai or Beijing, remains a forbidding experience for tourists compared to what is possible. There are no maps or simple printed guides immediately available for visitors, and even getting into town is not clearly explained.
Highly interesting figures have been produced on the strong performance of world tourism in the early part of 2008 from the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) despite the overall international economic slowdown. http://www.unwto.org/media/news/en/press_det.php?id=2532&idioma=E These figures are rooted in the well established trend that as personal incomes rise leisure services, of which tourism is a major part, are one of the few sectors of expenditure on which customers spend not only more in absolute terms but an increasing proportion of their income – clothing, health and education are others (although in many countries the latter two are in large part provided by the state). Promotion of tourism, and suitable physical infrastructure for tourism, therefore has to be an increasing part of county and city economic programmes. However promotion of many tourism in a number of countries remains amateurish -an exception among emerging economies is India’s ‘Incredible India’ campaign which is of extremely high quality. China in contrast continues to drastically underperform in professionalism of tourism promotion and this has doubtless contributed to lower than anticipated visitor numbers to Beijing for the Olympic Games. World tourism rose by around 5 per cent in the first four months of 2008 compared to the same period in the previous year – one per cent above the long term trend. This was despite the pressures to slowdown in the world economy as a whole. According to UNWTO:
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